This invention relates to electromotive operating arrangements for vehicle sliding doors.
In addition to manual operation of motor vehicle sliding doors, which requires laborious application of a relatively large amount force for opening and closing a door, there are electromotive actuating arrangements which facilitate the opening and closing of a vehicle door, at least to a considerable extent, and also ensure complete opening and closing of a sliding door by virtue of the provision of end position switches. However, the known arrangements of this type have disadvantages. Thus, German Offenlegungsschrift No. 196 39 974 requires "initial pushing" of the sliding door by hand, that is, the door has to be moved some distance from its end position by hand before a movement sensor for the door movement which is started manually closes an actuating circuit for an electric motor so that the door movement which is manually initiated continues in a motor driven manner. As is explained in the introduction to the description of that document with reference to the solution according to U.S. Pat. No. 5,434,487, which works by the same principle, such movement sensors involve comparatively high cost, and, in addition, the space which they require is difficult to find in the vehicles in which they are to be used. Accordingly, that reference proposes another, more compact embodiment of a reference movement sensor. However, as in the other arrangements, such a direction sensitive movement sensor still has a high cost and also has the disadvantage that initial pushing of the door by hand in the desired direction is necessary in order to initiate the electromotive door movement.
Such laborious initial pushing of the door is eliminated in the type of actuating arrangement described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,612,729. In that document, the actuating circuit for the electric motor is closed by an additional manual step, which is the introduction and rotation of a key in a rotary contact. However, even if, for the purpose of eliminating the movement of a key, the rotary contact or rotary switch provided in that document were replaced by a straightforward push contact, it would still be necessary to provide and actuate an additional contact on the vehicle body in addition to operating a door handle in order to release the closed sliding door.